Newsletter

Polly's People: Retired Savannah preacher on mission to give back

What would you do if you were walking along the beach and found a 2.27-karat diamond ring? Would you pawn it, sell it for the gold or give it to a loved one?

The Rev. Jim Rush would do none of the above. Instead, he would try to locate the owner and return it.

In fact, he’s already done just that. Several years ago while on the beach on St. Simons Island, Jim uncovered the huge jewel with the help of a handy-dandy metal detector.

Jim was treasure hunting with his detector when it beeped to signal that he had stumbled upon something. He temporarily stopped his hunt, scooped up the sand and discovered the ring.

He took it home to his wife, Barbara, who remembered seeing an ad for a lost ring in the newspaper. By doing a little detective work, Jim located the owner in Tennessee.

“I started calling (the woman) on a Monday and didn’t reach her for about a month,” he recalled, surmising the woman must’ve been out of town. When he finally did reach her, she was so thrilled she drove to St. Simons and later, wrote a poem for Jim.

Titled “The Miracle Man,” the poem starts like this: “There once was an avid beachcomber, who went on his merry way, combing the beach for treasures ...”

Evidently, the woman had been walking along the beach and had put her rings in her jacket pocket for safekeeping, he said. After a while, she warmed up, took off the jacket and tied the sleeves around her neck. When she did, the ring flew out of the pocket.

Jim, who is now retired, served as pastor of Isle of Hope United Methodist Church for more than a half-dozen years. In fact, back in the 1980s, Jim and his family were here when Isle of Hope Methodist nearly burned to the ground. After seven years at that pulpit, Jim accepted an assignment as district superintendent in Statesboro. He then was sent to Vineville United Methodist in Macon, followed by a stint at Epworth-by-the-Sea on St. Simons. All the while, the Rushes kept their Isle of Hope home and rented it out until retirement.

“We love Isle of Hope,” Jim said with his characteristic broad grin. “It’s a neat community, and we simply have the best neighbors.”

When he was a full-time preacher, Jim played golf occasionally but always felt guilty about leaving his wife and children for such a long time. “One of the best days of my life was that day when I gave up golf,” he said.

Jim also jogged but started treasure hunting after his wife and children gave him a metal detector as a gift. Since then, he’s upgraded several times and now has the Cadillac of metal detectors. Depending on where he is searching, Jim uncovers jewelry and Civil War relics, as well as old and new coins.

“It’s fascinating what’s under the ground,” he said.

From the beginning, Jim decided he would send any money he found to The Vashti Center for Children and Families, a Methodist-sponsored facility. He never bothers to count the coins but has been told by Vashti officials that his found treasures already total several thousand dollars.

Locations for Jim’s hunting grounds vary but run the gamut from the bluff on Isle of Hope to beaches to property near Louisville, where Gen. William T. Sherman and his troops camped during their March to the Sea. Jim knew the property owners, who gave him permission to walk the land with metal detector in hand.

In that cow pasture alone, which Jim has visited several times, he has found more than 500 Civil War-era bullets, a Confederate States of America belt buckle and other Civil War items. As a rule, whatever Jim finds on private property, he gives to the owners. The Louisville couple have a curio cabinet in their living room filled with treasures he has found, he said.

Jim has uncovered a ton of class rings and, somehow, always has managed to track down the owners. He recently returned a ring to a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Sadly, he never received any thanks, which is common and baffling, he added. But the positive experiences outweigh the negative. He remembers the time he helped a distraught teenager find her ring on a Hilton Head beach. “It was just incredible how her demeanor changed,” he recalled.

Jim often uses his hobby of “discovery and recovery,” as he describes it, as a way to minister to people. If he’s on the beach, for example, and someone approaches him and asks him about the most valuable thing he’s found, Jim responds: “The Lord.”

“I don’t try to push the religion part, but I use it as a tool to witness,” he explained. “It can open doors.”